Can demographics predict political change?

One of the big unknowns in politics is when a country truly becomes a democracy. An equally big unknown is how long democracy lasts in that country.

In 2010, the Arab Spring seemed to come out of nowhere. One after the other, rulers were ousted in Tunisia, Egypt, Libya and Yemen, falling like chess pieces. Civil uprisings took place in Bahrain and Syria. Major protests took place in Algeria, Iraq, Jordan, Kuwait, Morocco and Oman. Minor protests even took place in Saudi Arabia.

Yet the spring proved to be short lived and was followed by a harsh winter, not a pleasant summer. Since then, the only country that is still a democracy is Tunisia, where the spring had begun.

Earlier this year, Iran witnessed a nationwide bout of street disturbances and political turbulence. That too seemed to come out of nowhere. What has followed is a studied silence. Has the movement for democratic change fizzled out? Or might it usher in long-term reforms? Business Week commented that the Iranian president has offered some ‘conciliatory rhetoric. He offered the people’s right to protest and the legitimacy of their economic gripes.’

Of course, the supreme religious leader blamed Iran’s ‘enemies’ for the protests. But the magazine noted that the protests may have more to do with the country’s demographics than foreign interference.

Social scientists have struggled to explain why certain countries are democracies and others are not. The most frequently explanation that has been proffered is that each country is unique and no general observations can be offered.

Should we take comfort in the fact that the army has not mounted a coup since October 12, 1999? Even back then, General Pervez Musharraf was apologetic when he seized power. He broke from the past practice of imposing martial law and calling himself the title of Chief Martial Law Administrator

But factors such as the charisma of the leadership, the strength of the armed forces, and the chances of going to war with neighbours are inherently difficult to predict. And that has caused political scientists to search for simpler predictors of democracy. Some have argued that per- capita income can be a key driver. I discussed those in an earlier column, “Is there democracy in China’s future?”

A relatively new development is the use of the age-structure of a country to predict the probability that it will democratize and remain a democracy. One of the leading voices in this space is Richard Cincotta. He is affiliated with the Wilson Center and the Stimson Center, both in Washington, DC, and maintains a data-rich website, Political Demography.Org.

Cincotta says that there ‘is a strong correlation in recent history between increasing median age and increasing liberal democracy, and vice versa (the younger a population is, the less likely it is to be a liberal democracy).’

In 2008, he put forward the thesis that Tunisia would probably democratize before 2020 based on the age structure of the population. He was practically laughed out of the room where he was giving his talk at the US State Department.

He based his prediction on changes in the median age of Tunisia. He divides countries into four stages of aging: youthful (median age less than 25), intermediate (26 to 35), mature (36 to 45), and post-mature (greater than 45).

Uprisings can occur in any of these stages but for countries in their youthful phase, they are unlikely to result in sustainable democratization. Egypt’s median age was 24 and Tunisia’s 32, thus Egypt relapsed into authoritarian rule and Tunisia did not.

Iran is going through the intermediate phase and that creates an opportunity for democratic change. However, the authoritarian nature of the current regime and the strong hold of its political ideology on the populace are acting as a damper.

Cincotta says that “political demography can count itself among the few political and international relations disciplines to have achieved a series of demonstrable successes in forecasting political events and conditions within an explicit ‘window of time.”

One of his major conclusions is that states “that have been assessed as a liberal democracy have a high probability of maintaining that rating if they have a median age of greater than 28 years.”

Where does Pakistan fit into this analysis? Its median age is less than 24 years, placing it in the youthful (and unstable) phase. Freedom House, a US think-tank funded by the US government, which is widely cited in scholarly literature, characterizes Pakistan as “partly free” and gives it a score of 43 on a scale of 0 to 100. All the Scandinavian countries get a perfect score of 100, the UK gets 94, the US gets 86, Turkey gets 32, Egypt gets 26, and Syria gets the very low score of negative one.

Of course, Pakistan has an elected government, and this government replaced another democratically-elected government. General elections are coming up in a few months. On the surface it would appear to be a perfect democracy. But elections by themselves do not convert a country into a democratic republic.

Should we take comfort in the fact that the army has not mounted a coup since October 12, 1999? Even back then, General Pervez Musharraf was apologetic when he seized power. He broke from the past practice of imposing martial law and calling himself the title of Chief Martial Law Administrator. He decided to have himself called the Chief Executive, hoping perhaps to be mistaken for being the CEO of a multinational corporation as he went about his global travels.

But even though his military rule ended in 2008, after the ouster of General Pervez Musharraf, the country is still in reality governed by the military. This point was made obvious when Nawaz Sharif was dismissed by the Supreme Court.

As Professor Aqil Shah testified before the US Congress, “dishonesty” was not the real reason for dismissing the prime minister. It was just a convenient excuse.

This was the third time Sharif has been dismissed. In every instance, his dismissal was precipitated by his desire to seek a long-lasting peace with Pakistan’s arch-enemy India, and to assert civilian authority over the military. He also wanted to curtail the influence of ISI-funded terrorist organizations in the country, which have damaged the Pakistan’s reputation in international affairs, in addition to causing havoc and mayhem inside the country. In so doing, he crossed a red line.

Looking at Pakistan’s future demographics and politics, Cincotta offers a dim prognosis: “Pakistan’s trajectory of population growth will likely ensure that already-difficult urban governance and agricultural water management issues will present even bigger challenges in the state’s future. That said, political demographers view the dogged persistence of Pakistan’s youthful population age structure (median age about 23 years), and the hard-to-satisfy demands for education and jobs which are embodied in such distributions, to be the country’s most immediate demographic concern.”

Drawing upon eight rules for predicting democratic change, he comes to an unfortunate conclusion: that most of the countries that one expects to be assessed as free already are free, including Tunisia. He adds, “We are unlikely to witness liberal democracy emerging stabilizing in Egypt, Pakistan, Iraq, Jordan or Yemen anytime soon.”

To ensure sustainable growth, Pakistan has to focus hard on managing population growth. That will help preserve its nascent political freedoms, strengthen its democratic institutions, and empower civil society, while ensuring reasonable growth in per-capita income.

The writer has authored, Rethinking the National Security of Pakistan. He can be reached at ahmaddfaruqui@gmail.com